A recent study of 20,000 children confirmed that smoking just isn’t good for kids. I don’t know why this should come as a surprise to anybody, but I thought I should post it just in case….

The effects of smoking during pregnancy last up to age 12, while exposure to cigarette smoking after birth further worsens lung function, Dr. Manfred A. Neuberger of the Medical University in Vienna, one of the study’s authors, told Reuters Health.

It is difficult to tell, Neuberger noted, whether the impairment of lung function resulting from prenatal and early life exposure is permanent, given that many individuals with parents and siblings who smoke will have started smoking themselves by their teen years.

Somebody with an epi background might want to pick this one apart, but in the meantime the press release is interesting. Send it to your favorite ardent-second-hand-smoke-is-harmless friends.

Comments

It is difficult to tell, Neuberger noted, whether the impairment of lung function resulting from prenatal and early life exposure is permanent, given that many individuals with parents and siblings who smoke will have started smoking themselves by their teen years.

I don’t think it would be that hard to put together a reasonable study comparing non-smoking to smoking children of smokers. It’s true that many children of smokers themselves smoked (I’m a case in point) but many children of smokers are also comitted non-smokers (my wife & her brother haranged their parents for smoking — my mother would have throttled my sister and me had we flushed a carton of her smokes — still would for that matter.)

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